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Launching Gutenberg Radio - Public Domain Audiobooks

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the cliff's-notes dept.

tgbg writes "We are proud to announce the launch of "Gutenberg Radio". On these broadcast channels, you can hear the Gutenberg Library and anything else the Gutenberg family cares to share with its public."

20 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. Hmm... by BJH · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A truly brilliant idea. Now if only we didn't have to wait indefinitely for copyrighted works from after the 1920s or so to be released into the public domain...

    1. Re:Hmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Or instead of retroactively extending copyright by 10 years every 10 years, Congress could be direct and say "before 1928 it's public domain, after 1928 it's copyrighted". Why 1928? [Congress answering with a straight face]: "Because that's when Mickey Mouse was born".

    2. Re:Hmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They are using mp3. Surely this is an opening for vorbis, or better still Ogg Speex which is optimised for encoding speech -- there are plugins for Winamp, DirectShow filters, and a plugin for XMMS too.

    3. Re:Hmm... by GimmeFuel · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Even more likely, soon Congress will just announce "If you own a company that begins with D and ends in isney, you are hereby granted full license and copyright to every creative work ever made in perpetuity throughout the universe. If you own a non-Disney company, see your local representative for pricing information on Congresswhores of your own. If you a one of those human things, but not a corporation, please remember to vote. Democracy can't work without you."

      --
      live(free) || die;
  2. Maybe it's just me... by Xacid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Does anyone find it weird that they're using Gutenburg in a phrase related to sound, not sight? Gutenburg helped end the need for everything to be said...

  3. Police Academy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    I thought I could find sound bytes of Police Academy , Short Circuit, or Cocoon on here... where are they? What gives?

  4. Computer Generated Audio Book by zubernerd · · Score: 5, Interesting

    According to what I read on the linked site, they are using "Test-to-Speech" software. This seems no different than using a text-to-speech agent on your own computer. What is the advantage for recording the text-to-speech? (When I think of audio books, I usually think of a human reader... not a computer - a human tends to be more accurate, esp. with languages like english)

    --
    Accentuate the positive, don't waste your mod points on the negative.
  5. Review by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    These are NOT HUMANS reading the Project Gutenberg books to you. This is a COMPUTER generated reading of the books. If you enjoy the soothing voice of Stephen Hawking then you will enjoy listening to Project Gutenberg radio. I could only take about 2 minutes of Tolstoys' "The Cossacks" before I had to shut it off.

  6. Re:in the future... by DanThe1Man · · Score: 4, Funny

    It will be a little strange hearing an a guy saying "one zero zero one zero..."

  7. Why not let people download rather than stream? by dethl · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Some of us don't have the connection to be able to listen to this. I would rather download this into (insert favorite audio codec here).

    --
    "Some fight for law. Some fight for justice. What will you fight for? One day, you will see."
    1. Re:Why not let people download rather than stream? by frovingslosh · · Score: 5, Insightful
      zaphod4 says you can, but that really misses the point. If it's just software generated voice, then why in the world download the output for every book, rather than distribute the software and the source file? This would let the user play the audio when they wanted with a far smaller download, and only have to download the source file for the next book, and even let the user use the software on other (non Project G.) files.

      I'm very unimpressed with this, and it seems a real waste of a resource like Project G. If they see that there is a need for public domain audio books (and I certainly expect there is), it would seem extremely straightforward for a group like this to get humans to volunteer to read a public domain audio book and digitize it for an archive. This would yield far better results than a project of such low quality audio and delivered in a bandwidth wasteful way that make it unlikely the current form will be well received.

      --
      I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
  8. Gutenberg Video by Gefiltefish · · Score: 4, Funny


    This is exciting. I just can't wait for Gutenberg video to come out. My votes for priority works to be put into public domain video include: Lady Chatterly's Lover and for the more perverse slashdotters out there, Lolita.

    The classics will really come alive!

  9. The beginning by jesterzog · · Score: 4, Funny

    Who's Online There are currently, 841 guest(s) and 1 member(s) that are online.

    (And rising every second.) I guess slashdot hasn't quite kicked into top gear yet, then. :)

  10. What about the Chinese? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The Chinese used the print for thousands of years, long before Gutenberg.

    Actually, Gutenberg did not invent the printing, but the mobile printing.The Chinese language has thousands and thousands of ideograms and under these circumstances mobile printing is not a practical solution anyway; plate printing is easier to use. If it was useful for them The Chinese would have invented it.

    1. Re:What about the Chinese? by Galvatron · · Score: 4, Funny
      I see you're neither a linguist or historian. I'm both.
      ...
      The Chinese of 1300, for whatever reasons, decided that they didn't need to keep going forward in the sciences, so they didn't.

      Though I am neither a linguist or a historian, I have heard that explanation. I don't buy it. Frankly, putting on academic airs, and then declaring that the "real" reason China isn't as advanced as Europe is that "they" decided not to be, whoever "they" might be, is pretty pathetic. How do people just decide not to go forward in science? By not spreading knowledge! The movable type printing press was a tremendously powerful tool for spreading learning in Europe. One can argue about the precise magnitude of the impact, but I personally believe that at the very least, the printing press made it nearly impossible to stop scientific progress. By providing a tool to widely disseminate learning, advances were spread across the continent that might otherwise have languished in obscurity.

      Just because technology is now advanced enough to accomodate a language with thousands of distinct symbols doesn't mean that it didn't hold them back at the time. Just because the Chinese can build on the European advances of the industrial revolution doesn't mean that the Chinese were capable of advancing to the point of having their own industrial revolution without outside aid.

      --
      "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
  11. You're just not thinking about it the right way. by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The printing press was a the first effective tool for broadcasting information to a large population. Gutenberg did not invent writing, he invented a way of mass copying written language. Considering it that way, audio broadcasting fits right in.

    Bruce

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  12. A great gift for blind people by elpapacito · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Imagine being blind and being able to access (maybe in a not far away future)
    the entire Gutenberg ebook library by internet. No need to read the whole book
    with some kind of Braille device, no need to -own- a text-2-speech program
    and, maybe, no need to own a computer if the stream is broadcasted with some other equipement.

    Blind people will -love- this and I can't but be happy for them.

  13. Re:Unfortunately by tgbg · · Score: 5, Informative

    absloutely incorrect. we are using the eloquence engine, and a set of custom software to markup the text for inflection, etc ...

  14. Re:Commercial vs. free voices by IIRCAFAIKIANAL · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm of the opinion that if the voice doesn't sound British, they're wasting everyone's time. All audio books should be read by British people. It's probably some crappy free robotic sounding voice.

    Hey, what would a british robot sound like?

    [British]Crush! Kill! Destroy! Pip pip![/British]

    (Incidently, I'm not British, but I work with one and somehow it's rubbing off on me. I actually said "bloody" the other day. Being Canadian, this could get downright messy. "This poutine bloody sucks, eh?" *shudder*)

    --
    Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
  15. Talking Books and the Blind by Kynn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The site seems to be dead currently, but that's undoubtedly just the Slashdot Effect.

    I have no idea what they're using, but for the sake of accessibility and future-compatibility, I hope they're following the standards of the DAISY Consortium. DAISY has devised a standard for talking books which deserves support, especially as it's been specifically designed to provide accessibility for people with disabilities.

    Learn more about the DAISY Consortium here, and in the FAQ here.

    --Kynn

    --
    Kynn's page: http://kynn.com/